


The First Diary Entry

by ruthmakesstuff (orphan_account)



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, Diary/Journal, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-14
Updated: 2015-08-14
Packaged: 2018-04-14 18:02:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4574421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/ruthmakesstuff
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anders starts a diary.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The First Diary Entry

**Author's Note:**

> This is set between Awakening and DA2, so before he meets Hawke and Karl's mission happens. I may make a series of these? Who knows?
> 
> (If anyone spots/appreciates the Les Misérables reference, I love you forever).

Dear Diary,

Maker, I feel foolish writing a diary. We were ‘encouraged’ to keep them in the circle, so obviously it turned out the Templars were reading them. And the Enchanters. Everyone, really. I’m glad that I didn’t use my diary for more than crude drawings of the Templars. They don’t get my name, they certainly don’t get my private innermost thoughts.

Karl, poor Karl, wrote lengthy articulate rants about mage rights and oppression in the circles. Half of me wishes that I ha done that too, but half of me is glad not to have received the punishment he did. I cared more about my own survival back then than I do now. Now, does that mean I don’t care to live, or that I care more about the plight of others? Your guess is as good as mine, diary.

Sometimes – a lot of the time – I wonder what my life would have been like if I wasn’t born a mage. It helps to see magic as a gift from the Maker, a lot of the time, but I can’t help but wonder, you know?

On the one hand I mean that I know it would be different if I lived with my family, grew up to farm, remained in the Anderfels for all my life. But also, I wonder who I would be. So much of me is defined now by my fight for mage rights and freedom – even in the circle I was ‘that boy Anders, who always escaped’. Without magic, what kind of identity do I even have?

Karl saw that there was more to me than that. To him, I wasn’t ‘that boy Anders’. Was I ‘my love Anders’ to him? We never said it to each other. It was too dangerous. To have something you loved, it was just another thing that the Templars could take away. True, open love was a luxury mages couldn’t afford.

I don’t know what it was he saw in me. I don’t remember who I was before my magic appeared, and it became a game of ‘hide Anders from the chantry’ until I burned down that barn. Honestly? I have no idea who I am. Who I was. Who I could have been.

I miss Karl. It’s almost more painful to be in Kirkwall where he is than it was when I was still at Kinloch Hold. To see the gallows so often, to know that he is so close and yet still be unable to reach him, to touch him again, to hear his voice.

I don’t even know why I’m writing this. I mean, I do – it’s so dark in Darktown that days pass without me knowing how many, and writing before I go to sleep helps me keep a track of that, but why am I writing this? No-one cares about your lonely soul.

How does one sign off a diary entry, anyway? Like a letter?

Sincerely,

“Anders”.


End file.
